Missing Areas

Making up for the lack of excitement in the past two level selects, Metal Slug 5 stomps in and lays down a bucket load of unused areas, and allows the fatties to go to more than two areas without shrinking to original shape.

Huge thanks to candy76041820 for the name translations.

The other test stages usually experiment with things, but are ultimately very boring. Metal Slug 5, on the other hand, has three test stages, but are actually useful by providing weapons and vehicles. However, you can't, say, pick up a Rocket Launcher from the first one and warp to the second one for the Spider Slug, as your status, ammo, and weapon reset to default upon warping to one of these areas.
Selecting an unnumbered option freezes the game.

FOR 08 ブキコ1

The test stages all take place in the ruined subway from Mission 5, and this particular one has a bunch of hidden turkeys in the poster just in front of where you begin, enough to make your character become too big for their britches. Further along, some weapons drop from the ceiling, in this order, they are: Firebomb, Heavy Machinegun, Shotgun, Rocket Launcher, Flame Shot, Laser, Iron Lizard and Enemy Chaser. Once you drop onto the tracks, you’ll find some Slug vehicles, in this order: Slug Mariner (you can ride it in normal levels like a typical aerial vehicle), Slug Flyer, Metal Slug Type-R (but it changes to normal when taken to a different area from my experience), and the Slug Gunner. After that, it’s nothing but a mirrored version of the beginning of the area, minus the items.

FOR 09 ブキコ2

The second stage is no different than the first, except everything is gone, sans the turkeys, and a Dual Machine Gun is there.

FOR 10 ノリモノ

And the last of these stages starts you off at the tracks, leaving only vehicles for you to get. They are, in this order: Spider Slug (sadly, doesn’t work in many levels, if any), Slug Mariner, Slug Flyer, Metal Slug Type-R, and Slug Gunner.
Thanks to the sole weapon in the second stage and no weapons in the third, you can’t get the Super Grenade, Pulse Shot Gun or Pulse Rocket Launcher via these areas. Instead, you must find them in levels, which can be irritating.

Metal Slug 5 has a fair number of interesting unused areas, making up for the lack of excite in 3 and 4's innards.

1:2

This area is obviously used (it's the second screen of the game!), but it actually has a hidden alternate path at the end, blocked up by an added floor sprite! You can still see the tunnel boundaries with the VIEW GEO SCROLL dipswitches. However, it seems the tunnel ends in an invisible wall and does not have an exit coded to it.

How can I scroll the camera? Scrolling the camera can be done using Cheat Engine: I can't find a static address, but entering area 1:3, searching for hex value 00001000, then entering 2:2 and looking for hex value 00002000 will get it. The horizontal axis can be edited using the first two and last two numbers, and the vertical axis with the centre four.

1:6

This is simply an empty tunnel with an upper floor you cannot stand on and occasional breaks in it. The end leads to the boss (1:9). It's possible this was to be a continuation of the final room (1:5), which ends with a similar two-tiered layout.

1:B

This spawns you at the waterfall from Mission 1's raft sequence... only without a raft beneath the player, meaning they land in the drink, immediately killing your poor character. You're then stranded on the raft with only one helicopter to fight (that'll award you an Enemy Chaser upon defeat) and nowhere to go. Named "ruins test", it's unclear what this is testing.

3:3

You’re greeted by a Spider Slug, two boxes and several enemies and trucks in this unused tunnel area. Sadly, the rest isn’t very exciting, with the only enemies being trucks, missile shooting things, those hover bikes from Mission 2, officers, and robots. This leads to that area with the boxes, Slug Gunner and small appearance of the cult guy (3:6).

3:4

This room actually starts you a full screen's width into the area! There's a part before it with a porthole (the same seen at the end of the area, only longer) that was featured in one of the prerelease videos, showing a group of robots deploying, though that appears to have been cut.

3:8

Another tunnel type place, with a blue upper floor that gas mask soldiers drop down from. This leads to the final area before the boss (3:4).

3:9

I dubbed this area the “SHIT FUCK CUNT," or "SFC" for short due to my outburst over the surprising amount of shit that popped up all of a sudden.
This is the same as the second area of Mission 3 (3:2), but it’s been stripped of the normal items and dumped full of enemies for testing purposes. As such, there’s a bunch of unused things lurking about here. This is by no means a complete list, but the unused things I’ve noticed were:

• a cult guy in a hovering machine (used, but this one you can destroy, causing the cultist to jump off and flee)
• a teeny tiny speedboat (with teeny tiny driver)
• a hover jet thing from Mission 2 (used, but this can be destroyed, and one variant will fire missiles)
• a van with a mounted cannon on top (with no hitbox or projectiles)
• a Flame Shot
• "Glen Achilles" (!!)

This area leads to the unused Spider Slug area (3:3). Before you even think of going in here, activate invincibility, unlimited ammunition and unlimited bombs in the Dipswitch menu first.

3:A

This is simply another one of those tunnel areas, except this time, there’s absolutely no obstacles whatsoever! At least, that’s what I thought for about a year until DeathMetal informed me that if you shoot the ceiling, items drop down, including unused ones! Strangely, shooting some areas causes the game to crash and reset. The tunnel leads to a dead end.

3:B

This appears to be the same as that Slug Gunner area (3:6), until you reach where the Slug Gunner should be, and you find that the Black Hound you fought (optionally) in Mission 1 wants a rematch. It’s pretty much the same as the original fight, except sometimes it races off the left side of the screen, and comes back on the second floor! Once you defeat it, the music stops, and the tunnel leads nowhere.

3:C

A tunnel with a box containing a Slug Gunner, some ruins from the raft segment of Mission 1, and a vanilla invincible hover jet. It's possible this room was used for testing movement across slopes and irregular surfaces. Again, you won’t find a light at the end of this tunnel.

3:D

It’s the first sprite viewer! The game was rushed out so quickly they forgot to remove this, and all those unused levels and sprites. I mean, Metal Slug 4 had a bunch of unused sprites, but at least it didn’t let them get easily accessed via a simple debug menu.
This version displays sprites inanimate, and you have to manually scroll through each frame of animation. The controls are ...

• PLAYER 1 A – Next frame.
• PLAYER 1 B – Previous frame.
• PLAYER 1 C – Next sprite.
• PLAYER 1 D – Previous sprite.
• PLAYER 2 A – Next palette.
• PLAYER 2 B – Previous palette.
• PLAYER 2 C – Toggles game speed.
• PLAYER 2 D – No apparent purpose.
• PLAYER 2 JOYSTICK – Moves sprite.

While this is more convenient to work with when sprite ripping, it doesn’t have all the sprites in the game. See the second sprite viewer for the rest. It’s worth noting that if you run forward, the game cycles through a number of colours; first green, then blue, red, black, white, and then cycles through the last two repeatedly. And also, the game plays the sounds for when you start a frame of animation; for example, if you get the first frame of a soldier dying, their death scream will play.

3:E

The second sprite viewer! This has all the sprites in the game, and has them animated, which can be somewhat inconvenient when sprite ripping, but what the hey. Here are the controls.

• PLAYER 1 A – Next animation.
• PLAYER 1 B – Previous animation.
• PLAYER 1 C – Next object.
• PLAYER 1 D – Replays animation.
• PLAYER 2 A – Next palette.
• PLAYER 2 B – Previous palette.
• PLAYER 2 C – Shrinks sprite.
• PLAYER 2 D – Expands sprite.

The things I noted for the previous sprite viewer also work here, with something else: If a sprite plays an animation that creates something (like a soldier throwing a grenade), that object actually appears! It still kills you, though, so keep invincibility on if you’re sprite ripping.

4:5

This appears to be a duplicate of the boss stage. Strange.

5:2

There's a chunk of store front hidden off the left side of the screen that you never see; you only ever see from the purple curtain onwards.

5:6

You normally start on the tower and jump across pillars to the elephant boss... but there's a whole ground floor you're missing out on, complete with a totally unique, otherwise unseen backdrop of spinning cogs!

5:8

This is simply an empty area with burning and destroyed buildings in the background. It leads to the tower full of cultists and robots (5:5).
It may appear inconspicuous, but the name for this screen is "Turtle Boss", cementing it as the arena for fighting the unused turtle boss! Of course, there's no evidence of it left in this room, so you're left to use your imagination.

5:9

This is the same as the second-to-last area (5:6), but instead of starting on that dinky little platform, you start on one of the pillars. It is otherwise exactly the same, complete with its unused underside.